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"Little Mouse, Little Mouse"

One of my favorite storytime bloggers is Melissa and she has begun a regular "Flannel Friday" series on her blog. I was inspired to share my version of "Little Mouse" today.

Sometimes I am amazed at how well the smallest things go over at storytime. I began doing this "Little Mouse" game after reading about it on several blogs and while I was skeptical, it has turned into a huge hit. Which just shows you how much I know.

If you are not familiar with "Little Mouse," it is ridiculously simple. You simply make a bunch of houses of different colors and hid a felt mouse behind them. Then you teach the kids to chant "Little Mouse, Little Mouse! Are you in the ____(color)____ house?"

Currently we have 9 different houses. I have been meaning to make a 10th. Here they are:

And here is our dear friend, Little Mouse:

I used a coloring page image to cut out the shapes of the houses and then embellished them with puffy paint. Puffy paint isn't the easiest material to work with so the windows and doors aren't perfect, but such is life. Maybe Little Mouse's neighborhood has shoddy construction. Little Mouse I made freehand.

This game is genius because it is extremely interactive and anyone can do it. It works with 1 kid and it works with 30. I adapt it for a one or two family storytime by having the parents hide the mouse for the kids and then the kids hide it for the parents.

"Little Mouse" is a great game to play as part of your opening ritual, because you can do it as many times through as the kids want. It is a great way to break in a new crowd at an outreach event and let them get to know. The kids love the suspense and it gets them used to interacting with you.

There are a few different ways to mix this up:

If we have a big crowd, I point to a certain colored house while we are chanting and the kids guess that house. If we have a smaller crowd (say only 3 kids), I let them come up and take a turn at saying the rhyme and then picking a house.

I have been meaning to make another Little Mouse and hide two. Or what if I play a "trick" on the kids and hide something other than a mouse? Sometimes I worry that the mouse won't be home at all!
You can have the kids count the remaining houses. You can talk about what color house the kids live in. And if they have mice there.

They like to come in and tell me which house they think Little Mouse is hiding behind. Sometimes they are right!

Just a little note about our flannel board. The one shown here is the big one that lives at my regular branch. I love it, so if you're in the market, definitely check out this one. I also have a double-sided portable felt storyboard that I bought from Etsy.

Wow, I honestly cannot believe I had that much to say about the world's easiest felt board story.

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It's a Flannel Friday Bonanza! I think having so much to say about it just proves how powerful these more interactive storytime activities really are. They're not really simple at all, are they? So much is going on!

I did this flannel for my toddlers at storytime last week and they LOVED it. I called out, "Little Mouse,Little Mouse can you come out and play" and the children would come up and choose a color house to look under. This was great fun and one that we will do often.

I like to do a lot of nursery rhymes with the parachute for a few reasons:Parents/kids are more likely to participate in activities where the content is already familiarI already know them so I don't have to learn a whole bunch of material at once (just being honest here)Easy for the families to replicate this activities at home with whatever props they might have. If they (or you!) don't have a parachute, a bed sheet or blanket can be substituted easily. Even a beach towel would work for one parent and one child to play together. This is my mean reason and I tried to hammer this in at all three programs I did the past two weeks! Parachute …

One of my favorite things to do in my library is create displays. I thought it might be helpful if I shared the calendar that I drew up to make sure I don't miss any of the "must-do" displays. It is so helpful if you can take people over to a seasonal display versus trying to look up in the catalog or find Easter books or whatever. I hope this helps any new librarians who might be overwhelmed by the process of marketing your collection!

As a general rule, I tend to keep displays up for about 3-4 weeks or if I run out of books all together. One tip I'd recommend if you have the space for multiple displays is to change one display in each space every week and rotate around the youth department like that. For example, one week you put up a new picture books display, then nonfiction, then YA/teen, etc. Don't forget to raid your CD and DVD collections for a multi-category display.

Here's one of my favorite parachute activities! I actually mentioned it a few months ago when talking about my summer parachute playtime but it's become a storytime staple since. We've been doing this here at my 2 and 3 year old storytimes and it's a great activity that I thought deserved its own post. I learned the song "Sleeping Bunnies" from Mary and I had the idea to adapt it to a parachute activity.

Here are the words:Sleeping BunniesSee the little bunnies sleeping til it's nearly noon. Come and let us gently wake them with a merry tune. Oh, how are still. Are they ill? Wake up soon. (Here I yell "WAKE UP BUNNIES!" and the kids shake the parachute.)